


かげろう

by MooseFeels



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Restaurant, Cooking, Eating Disorders, Food, Ghosts, Haunting, Photography, Sensuality, Trans Katsuki Yuuri, pleasure - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-22
Updated: 2018-11-19
Packaged: 2018-12-18 18:21:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 15,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11880177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MooseFeels/pseuds/MooseFeels
Summary: Viktor has never belonged to his body. Yuuri has always been inextricably trapped by his body.Yuuri teaches Viktor that his body can be a site of pleasure. Funny thing, Viktor teaches Yuuri the same thing.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> "かげろう" (kagerou) translates as either "mayfly" or "heat haze" and apparently indexes a like, specific ephemerality.

Viktor is fifteen when he dies for the second time.

He’s at the rink, flying in a jump at one moment and the next he’s in a bed in a hospital, Yakov’s red face waxy and pale beside the bed.

Doctors say he’s been under for thirteen hours, that they weren’t sure he’d wake up. Some kind of cardiac event.

Viktor smiles and nods like he always does, though, because he’s tried telling doctors before and they don’t seem to understand.

 _My mother gripped my heart_ , he told a doctor once, when something similar happened, but they thought it was a figure of speech.

Viktor knows, though.

Viktor is fifteen when he dies the second time; he is not even a second old when he dies the first.

Yakov told him he was born blue faced, his umbilical cord wrapped around his neck. Yakov knows this because it is in the medical file that followed Viktor from the group home and into Yakov’s care.

Viktor was born dead and his mother, before she could even hold him, was dead, too. She follows him. He can’t see her-- some of them he can-- but he can always feel her. And sometimes, she reaches into him, and she grips his heart. Usually just enough to make it race or startle, never long enough to bring him out of a jump and into the hospital.

Now, Viktor is twenty seven and he has died a couple of handful of times since. He always wakes back up, though, usually in hospital beds or fallen in place in his house. It doesn’t happen too often; since he was fifteen it occurs no more frequently than twice a month and usually less often. Months, sometimes years at a time without dying. Days, weeks, without even a twinge from his mother’s fingers.

Viktor is eighteen when he cuts his hair. The doctor tells Yakov that Viktor had a stroke, that maybe he shouldn’t expect to _speak_ for a few years. Viktor makes what the doctors call a _miraculous recovery_.

Viktor dies, frequently, but he always wakes up and with relatively little damage. Healthy and hale and in the land of the living. The doctors attribute his eccentric cardiovascular health to life in the group home, before adoption. Something about how the rapidly shifting power structures made an already tenuous situation all the more delicate.

Viktor is twenty seven, living on his own, in his own apartment, thousands of miles away from Yakov. Viktor lives with his dog and his camera and the ghost of his mother.

Viktor lives with ghosts.

Viktor looks over the negatives, wiping at his tired eyes.

He brushes his hair out of his face and gets up, gets a glass of water. It’s late, but he wants to have the negatives sorted to send for printing as soon as possible. He’d have coffee, but something about coffee-- about caffeine-- feels like that fluttering, uncomfortable feeling he has when his mother is around.  It makes something in him shake more than he cares for.

Viktor glances down at his phone.

 _Tomorrow morning_ , a message reads. _Bring your camera._

Viktor sighs, looking at it.

 _Chris_ ,  he types out, before backspacing. _I’m not sure I can make it._ He sends.

 _Bullshit_ , Chris answers, almost instantly. _Magazine won’t work with anyone else and the appointment is in yr name._

Viktor sighs. _Proofs on the park series,_ he sends. _Not sleeping tonight_.

 _Go the fuck to sleep_ , Chris sends back. _Paying gig. Keep roof over yr pretty head. Food for yr dumb dog. Keep yr dumb heart out of the fking hospital._

Chris knows Viktor has “a heart condition.” Chris thinks Viktor going to the hospital correlates with stress.

Viktor looks at the message.

 _Go the fck to sleep, Viktor,_ Chris sends again.

It’s past midnight. Shoot for the magazine is at eleven tomorrow.

 _I’m going_ , Viktor types. _I’m going_.

He doesn’t send it. Flicks the lights off in his apartment and climbs into bed, beside Makkachin.

Feels the steady beat of his own heart deep into the night, into sleep.

* * *

 

Yuuri slices through the onion easily, a series of smooth, practiced motions, the kinds he’s done nearly every day since he was fourteen and he started working. It hits the hot oil and it screams, and after the stinging in the air clears, the smell blooms in the room. Yuuri feels his mouth water.

Mushrooms join the onion, and eventually garlic, chili flake, and tomato paste. It begins to caramelize-- turn brick red in earnest-- when he adds the crushed tomatoes.

When Yuuri cooks for himself, which isn’t often, he cooks comfort food. Heavy sauces and rich dishes. His terrible metabolism doesn’t keep the dishes off of his frame, and he’s awfully self-conscious of it. Of every mouthful of butter that goes between his lips and every rich pork dish he has to try before it leaves the window, there are lean days of rice cakes and cucumber salad. Yuuri eats vegetarian when he’s not at work-- it’s just _easier_.

Yuuri loves food. He loves cooking. And his love has animated his career and his restaurant and put him in papers and magazines.

Yuuri loves food. He loves cooking.

He loves it, he promises.

He can’t eat vegan tonight, but he’ll at least eat vegetarian.

Yuuri tosses the paste from the pot into the sauce and finishes it with about half a tablespoon of butter.

Yuuri sits down on his couch and eats the bowl of pasta, and he sits there for a long moment to feel it in him, to resist the strident urge to go vomit.

He clenches his fists and takes a deep breath, before he gets up from the couch and goes to shower. Grease from the day peels off of him, easily, and instead of burned oil and spices and pork, the smell of his soap and shampoo overcomes him; sweet almonds in his shampoo and seaweed in his face wash. He closes his eyes and sighs into it, happily. His muscles are sore. When he stretches, his back cracks. He shakes his shoulders and they go from overtight to loose. He rolls his weight on the balls of his feet, and he considers distantly the three pound bag of epsom salts sitting under his sink.

He dries off and climbs into bed. Sets his alarm. He looks at his phone-- it’s one AM. _Katsu_ closed half an hour ago. Phichit, his sous, is closing the kitchen for the night instead of Yuuri himself. Yuuri will be back in at ten, to start work on the menu for the night when the doors open at six. It’s Wednesday. Tomorrow is Thursday.

Yuuri forces himself to stop thinking about the fish he has sitting in the walk in and the abundance of lemons he wound up taking off of Giorgio’s hands and--

Yuuri closes his eyes, and he finally falls asleep.  

He wakes up, _suddenly_ at seven, a full hour before his alarm rings.

Yuuri sits up and groans, wiping the sleep from his eyes.

Six hours. Not great but better than most nights.

He rolls out of bed and pees and showers again. Puts on fresh jeans and a shirt and slides into his clogs. Grabs his notebook and a pen and a mason jar full of oatmeal.

Phichit made him starting prepping breakfast like this. Phichit has known Yuuri since college and knows that if he doesn’t make sure Yuuri eats every meal, Yuuri _won’t_ eat every meal.

Yuuri catches the train across town and unlocks the back door. Flicks on the kitchen lights and the stereo.

Sets on a cup of coffee and opens his note book and sits at the counter and starts to plan.

The fish, the leeks, the lemons. The _lemons_.

Yuuri fiddles his lip between his teeth. He’s got shrimp coming today-- he’ll have Leo and Guang-Hong peel and head those for stock and then the shrimp themselves are for the polenta. The lemons-- push comes to shove he can just turn out shortbread again but he’d rather do something _interesting_ with them. And of course that taleggio is destined for the creamed corn (Giorgio _does_ have his corn, right?).

And Yuuri is thinking through all of this, mile a minute, when there’s a buzzing at the back kitchen door.

And Yuuri flips to the front of his notebook-- to the calendar-- and he _remembers_.

“ _Shit_ ,” Yuuri hisses, standing up and feeling an overwhelming sort of shame that he’s not wearing that shirt Phichit got him for _exactly_ these occasions. He’s wearing a shirt Phichit got for him when he went to Florida-- a beat to hell tee with Ernest Hemingway on a blue field.

Yuuri grabs his cup of coffee and rushes to the backdoor and hopes against hope that it’s Phichit forgetting his keys but--

It’s not.

Yuuri opens the door and two men are there. Both are tall and fashionable. Slim and well dressed in an effortless sort of way.

“Ah!” Yuuri cries, practically shouts. “It’s you!”

He slams the door shut and puts his mug down in the handwashing sink beside the punch clock. Pushes his hair away from his face and then re-opens the door.

“Good morning!” He greets, his voice grating and overloud in his own ears. “Please, come in!”

One of the men-- dark undercut with blonde on top, round glasses, and clever green eyes-- chuckles. “Chef Katsuki,” he says. “I see you forgot.”

Yuuri feels his body go from pale with terror to flush with embarrassment instantaneously.  

“No!” he exclaims, stepping aside to let them in. “Mr. Giacometti--”  
“Chris,” he interrupts.

“Chris, I would never,” Yuuri continues. “I just misplaced the day in my planner-- I’m so _sorry_ my sous and pastry chefs aren’t even in yet and Celestino doesn’t even come _in_ on Thursdays.”

“It’s okay Chef Katsuki--”

“Yuuri,” Yuuri interrupts.

“It’s okay, Yuuri,” he says. “Viktor and I just wanted to get a few questions and pictures in. Just you and the kitchen, if that’s alright.”

Viktor must be the other man; he waves slightly.

He is the most beautiful man Yuuri has ever seen.

He has silver-grey hair that is cropped such that his bangs fall away from his part and into his crystal-blue eyes. He has high cheekbones and a sharp, graceful nose. He has a thin sort of mouth that curves easily into a friendly smile. He has a camera in one hand.

“Of course,” Yuuri says, unable to tear his eyes away from the photographer. “I just set some coffee on. Do you like quail eggs? I want to try something.”

* * *

 

The kitchen is small but well organized.

Viktor hasn’t been on a ton of assignments like this one, but Chris is right and they do pay alright. Better than hoping to sell prints, at least.

Most of the surfaces are stainless steel, and they glow slightly in the flourescent lighting overhead. The floors are sturdy tile covered in anti-slip mats. The cabinets have open sides and latches and labels.  The air conditioner is already running at full tilt, but the stoves and oven are still off. Viktor shakes off a shiver.

The chef is a few inches shorter than Viktor, and Viktor is fascinated by him instantly. He has a nervous sort of energy, rattling through him. There’s something exhausted and heavy in his eyes and face, something sleepless. Something almost lonely.

“I’m so sorry,” he says again. His voice is soft and has an accent Viktor can’t quite place. Another foreigner, like him and Chris. “Again-- I’m-- I’m very sorry.”

“Yuuri,” Chris purrs. “It’s just little ol’ me, and Viktor? Why, dearest Vitya is just the photographer. He’ll hardly say a word.”

Viktor nods. If it meant he could stay in the kitchen with this nervous, fascinating man, he’d never say anything again in his life.

The chef gestures to a couple of bar stool tucked under a countertop. “Please,” he says.

He darts to a fridge and comes back with a milkcrate stacked with things and a large cookie sheet scattered with salt, small divots pockmarking the surface

“I’ve been curing these,” he says. “And our pastry chef, Otabek, he made these yesterday.” He pulls out a bag with squat, regular english muffins. A large tupperware container and a small container of what looks like arugula.

“No kale?” Chris asks, his voice playful.

Yuuri shakes his head. “Kale’s texture is no good, at least without blanching. And arugula is….acrid, but--” He looks at the greens, almost fondly. Smiles, ever so slightly. “But there’s something soft to their bite, I think. People love kale but...I think it’s overrated.”

He cuts the english muffins in half and smears them heavily with butter from the tupperware and lays them facedown in a skillet to crisp. He pulls them and immediately smears the surface with a thick glimmering of what Viktor thinks is chevre. Then he pulls something from the pan full of salt. It’s small and deep golden in color. Viktor uncaps his camera and gestures with it.

Yuuri, the chef, he looks up at him and turns a little pink over his cheeks. He nods.

Viktor focuses on his hands, fingers delicately prizing it like a small treasure.

“Quail eggs, cured,” Yuuri says softly. He pulls out a microplane and grates the egg yolk carefully over the muffin. Gives it a bit of black pepper.

Pushes a plate in front of them and wipes his hands into his apron. Gestures. “Please, eat,” he says.

He grabs three mugs and fills them with coffee. The coffee is burnt and oversteeped. Yuuri drinks a mug of it like it’s water.

Chris smiles. Takes a muffin half, open faced, and takes a bite.

Viktor does too.

The cornmeal bottom is rough against his tongue, and the rich butter and cheese are cut by the arugula and by a salty, strong flavor he thinks must be the egg.

He’s never had anything like it.

Yuuri takes a couple of bites and drops it. Wipes his hands again.

“You had questions?” He asks Chris.

Chris smiles. Nods. “Nothing too scary, I promise,” he says. “I was so impressed the last time I was in town-- I’m so glad working with Leroy has been productive for you.”

The chef smiles. “JJ is very passionate,” he says, his voice diplomatic. He crosses his arms and leans back to rest on the counter behind him.

“And you’re telling me that the situation in Detroit wasn’t?” Chris asks.

The chef looks at Chris, and if Viktor weren’t good at _noticing_ the way he does, he thinks he’d miss the expression that flutters there for a racing instant. Something like seeing him as a viper, a predator he has let comfortably into his home. But like lightning it disappears and leaves Viktor dizzy from the suddenness, and the calm expression returns.

“Do you know the expression-- ‘gilding the lily?’” He asks. “JJ introduced me to it. Luxury on luxury. I didn’t really-- JJ is great because there’s no opportunity for beauty he doesn’t allow me to take. And that implicit trust is sourced in his passion. Detroit was passionate but it wasn’t a _trusting_ relationship. Next question.”

Chris laughs. “A good answer,” he says.

“Is this _actually_ about my restaurant, or is it about my ex’s restaurant?” He asks.

“It’s about yours,” Chris says. “We’re still learning to see you here, though, and not in terms of what you did at _Close_.”

“I’ve been here for two years,” he says. “Before Detroit, I worked in the kitchen at my family’s inn. Why aren’t I asked about that?”

Viktor is very glad Chris excused him from talking. The food is possibly the tastiest thing Viktor has ever eaten, and he has the distinct impression that this is something of a conversational minefield.

Chris takes a sip of coffee.

“Why do you make such _bad_ coffee?” he asks.

Yuuri shrugs. “I don’t think about it,” he answers. “I drank shitty coffee all through college and just got used to it, I guess. I have this autopilot when I come in and it never tells me to make good coffee. Just coffee and then breakfast and then prep and menu planning. But usually other parts of the kitchen are here.”

Viktor gestures with the camera again.

The chef smiles at him, his brown eyes soft and warm and his smile patently unsure but welcoming. It’ll be a good one.

“Thanks,” Viktor says. “Breakfast is incredible, by the way.”  
“Really?” he says. “I think it needs acid-- maybe do the cured quail egg as a compound butter? And something more substantial on it than just arugula-- do you like grapefruit?”  
Viktor shrugs. He’s honestly unsure now. He’s never thought about it.

“Are you planning on adding a brunch service?” Chris asks.

Yuuri shakes his head. “But play is generative,” he answers.

The door opens and a couple of people step in and stop talking, interrupted.

“Oh, shoot,” one of them says, pulling off a denim baseball cap and hanging it on a hook near the door. “Was this today?”  
Yuuri nods. “Phichit, the sous chef,” he says. “And Leo.”

Leo doesn’t look a day over eighteen. Phichit looks like he’s _maybe_ twenty two, with eyes that are bright with mischief.

“Sorry,” he says. “I can set a table for you guys in front or--”  
“It’s fine,” Yuuri says.

“It was supposed to be quick, anyways,” Chris says.

Viktor takes a few picks of the walk-in, of the long line of the stainless steel countertop. He keeps glancing over at the chef, who alternates looking at paperwork, talking to the sous chef, and asking if they need anything.

“Thank you so much,” Chris says, standing near the door. “We’ll send your publicist the article before it goes to print.”

“We have a publicist?” the chef asks, sounding disbelieving.

“ _Yes_ ,” the sous chef calls from the other side of the kitchen

Yuuri nods. He extends his hand outward and Chris shakes it, and then he turns to Viktor. “It was nice meeting you,” he says.

Viktor nods. “And you,” he replies.

“Come back,” the chef says. “You should have a real meal here and not just whatever I throw together.”  
“Yuuri, darling, you say that like what you throw together could _possibly_ disappoint,” Chris says, without missing a beat.

Viktor nods. “I will,” he says. “I’m sure it’s incredible.”  
The chef smiles, just barely.

Yuuri is haunted, just like he is.


	2. Chapter 2

-

“Hey,” Phichit says, once Chris and the photographer are gone. “Did you eat breakfast?”   
Yuuri looks at the stray plate still on the counter, at the muffin he had three bites of before the anxiety for the night crept up around the edges. 

“Some,” Yuuri says. 

Phichit doesn’t answer, which is an answer in and of itself. 

“I’m fine,” Yuuri says. 

Phichit doesn’t say anything, still. 

“I was thinking we run the ditalini risotto with roasted fennel,” Yuuri says. “Make it with the vegan broth and we can run it for the vegetarian menu.”

Phichit nods. “Do you want me to start working on the lemons for bars?”

Yuuri nods. “Sounds good,” he says. “I need to do ordering paperwork. I’ll be right back and then we’ll press ricotta for the gnocchi?”

“Sure thing,” Phichit answers.

Yuuri slips back to the office and takes a deep breath. Pulls out the ordering paperwork and reads over it and pulls out the calendar and checks the growing season charts. 

The phone rings, he answers it. 

“Katsuki,” he answers.

“Yuuri,” his sister says on the other end of the line, “what can you do with onions? We’ve got a bumper crop.”

Yuuri closes his eyes, thinks. “Marmalade,” he says. “Top focaccia with it. We can always do consomme.”

“Good,” Mari says. “Because the farm is sending you a  _ fuckload _ . No idea what happened with that back field."

Yuuri sighs. “Thanks,” he says. “How’s everything else-- how are the ducks?”   
“Healthy. Happy. Fat,” Mari answers. “I’m glad we’re not your supplier, I’ve grown attached.”

Yuuri huffs a short laugh. “I learned my lesson after the quail. Are you going to be making the delivery?” He asks.

“Mom,” Mari replies. “Did the corn come through? Giorgio is good, I swear.”

“We’ll find out,” Yuuri says. “It's not here yet.”

"Cool," she says. "When are you going to come see us?"

"Soon," Yuuri says. 

"That's what you always say," she answers. There's a paused sound, an out of rhythm breath.

"I thought you quit," Yuuri says.   


"Yeah, well, me too," she replies. There's the barest sound, the hiss cigarette smoke escaping her. "I'm down to a pack a week, though."

Yuuri smiles. It's an improvement. "I will be down soon," he says. "I promise. Things have been busy here."

"Having fun?" Mari asks, ever his older sister and ready to tease him. 

"Summer is nice," he says. "Everything's here." He flips through the pages of an invoice-- he should really talk to JJ about getting a sommelier, Yuuri really isn't qualified to design their wine service. "I should go," he says. "Day is starting for real."

“No problem,” Mari replies. "Talk to you later, little brother."

Yuuri hangs up and waits for a moment and gets up. Faxes off a couple of order invoices and then heads back into the kitchen. 

Phichit already has his sleeves rolled up. It doesn’t matter how big the pots they work with are or how many people are working on it at once-- there’s nothing really that prevents the edges and front of their clothes from getting drenched except just keeping them as far from the flood as possible. And although their work to make cheese is in no way thorough (or, well, developed), there's something fun about pulling the curds from the whey, and Yuuri loves figuring out what to do with the whey leftover. Right now, it's kickstarting the pickles he has sitting in the walk-in. 

Phichit grabs a container and turns on the spigot at the bottom of the pot. The whey drains away, cloudy. 

“You ready?” He asks, once the stream slows and smaller curds begin to slip through. 

Yuuri nods. Pulls up his own sleeves and helps Phichit manoeuvre the stock pot from the stove to the sink, where Minami holds a cheesecloth lined chinois. They pour it carefully, steadily, the curds dumping out easily and the remainder of the whey slurping down the drain. 

“Awesome,” Phichit says “We’ve got it from here.”

Yuuri nods. “I’m going to pull the laminated dough for Otabek,” he says. “He should be in soon.”

“Hey,” Phichit says, and Yuuri looks up at him. “You were great.”   
“You weren’t even here,” Yuuri answers. "And I thought we agreed, no weird personal stuff in the kitchen."

Phichit rolls his eyes dramatically. "Whatever, Yuuri. You were great. I know you were. Stop freaking out." 

“No,” Yuuri says. “How is the vinegar coming?”   
-

Viktor gets home and the first thing that happens is his phone rings.

Viktor glances at the phone on his table and picks it up. 

“Nikiforov,” he answers, like he always does.

“Vitya,” Yakov says on the other end, “would it kill you to tell me how you are doing, or must I be forced to call you every four months when finally Lilia and I are so consumed with worry?”

“Hello, Yakov,” Viktor says, cheerfully. “How is St. Petersburg?”

“A seagull attacked me yesterday,” Yakov answers. “How is your heart?”

“I’m fine,” Viktor says. “Nothing has happened since last you called. Did you leave the seagull alive?”   
“Barely,” Yakov answers. “When will you come home?”   
Viktor barely suppresses a sigh. “Yakov--”

“You are still so young,” Yakov says. “We know you want to be your own man but--”   
“Yakov, I have a job and an apartment here. I pay my own bills. I  _ am _ my own man.”

“Vitya,” Yakov growls. 

“Goodbye, Yakov,” Viktor says, and he hangs up, closing his phone. 

He sits down on his couch for a moment and lets free a deep breath. Makkachin pads over to him and settles by his side. Viktor pets her absently. 

The light in the living room glimmers. 

Viktor stands back up and grabs the film from this morning from his bag, along with a couple of other rolls waiting for developing. 

Viktor doesn’t like to work digitally. It’s not that he doesn’t think it’s useful or convenient, it’s that there’s something about the texture of it. There’s something missing, something lacking without the grain and the deposit of silver in gelatin. There is, of course, also the flickering at the edges of the screen and the way staring and staring and staring at a computer makes his eyes ache and his head dizzy. It makes him feel-- 

It lacks  _ solidness _ .

Viktor doesn’t work digitally, if he can help it, which is how he finds himself standing in his dark bathroom cracking the rolls of film open with the can opener and then feeding the end of the film into the reel. He gets it in with minimal difficulty and then seals the reel in the first tank. He opens the second and the third, and within fifteen minutes he has all of the film set into reels and the reels sealed in light-proof tanks. He flicks on the light and opens the door. Makkachin pads to the doorway and settles. 

“Hello, beautiful,” he says to her. “I’m sorry I was so put out when I came home. How was your day?”   
She sighs, as is her way. 

“I met someone interesting today, Makka,” he says. He checks the temperature on the water before diluting the developer. He adds it to the tank and then agitates. “He has a dog too, like you. Well, sort of like you, but different.”

Makkachin blinks. 

Viktor checks his watch. “He’s a chef,” he says. “He made the most delicious breakfast.”

He turns the tank after thirty seconds. 

Makkachin huffs. 

“He told me to come back to his restaurant,” he says. “He wanted to make me another meal. Can you imagine? How lovely.”

Viktor checks his watch. The lights in the bathroom waver slightly.

Viktor keeps watching the time. 

“I know they mean well,” Viktor says. 

Makkachin says nothing. 

He works through all the tanks, taking about an hour to get all of the tanks developed and rinsed.

He unspools the film and sets it to dry in the bathroom. He turns on his scanner and his computer and looks at the negatives intently. 

He slides strips into the negative holder and opens the scanning software. 

He scans the negatives in and pulls them open to reverse the color and--

Suddenly, beautiful, there it is. Unprinted and unedited, the steel fixtures of the kitchen, the long knife, the shape of the chef’s hands as he cuts the english muffins open and pulls the egg yolks from the salt. 

Yuuri Katsuki. 

Viktor attaches the files to an email and sends them to Chris.  _ I’ll print and edit them across town tomorrow. Thought you might want to see the early ones _ . He doesn’t like to work digitally, which most of his employers find hard to work with-- this is his solution. He develops and prints his own work, but he sends scans midway through and at the end of the process. The darkroom he rents for printing has a high quality scanner he can use to send final prints. 

He sends it off, checks his bank account, and turns his computer back off. Puts the negatives in their holders and clips Makkachin’s leash on her. 

“Come on,” he says. “Lets got on a walk.”

It’s late summer, the last of the heat holding on viciously. It’s early evening, but the heat is just beginning to ease for the day, the sun just beginning to slip away from the sky and through the horizon. The city begins to shift to the evening, slide from working to play and to rest. Viktor slides on his sunglasses. Makkachin pads down the street with him and the two of them wander, sort of just aimlessly. It feels good to get out but without any kind of purpose. 

Viktor does everything he can to shake the feeling that has pursued him since he was developing the film. The feeling of a hand reaching around his heart. 


	3. Chapter 3

It’s late September when next Yuuri see Chris. Summer has faded fast in the north, like it always does. Autumn rushes in quickly, in drifts of leaves and rapidly chilling winds. Yuuri knows that in maybe a week now, the temperature won’t get about sixty for a few months. The menu is beginning to shift and the daylight hours are finally beginning to shorten. Soon the menu will focus on winter citrus and root vegetables and marrow and cassoulet. Richness and fat and warmth and heaviness and heat. But now, things are transitioning. A strange, in-between time. A liminal time. 

Chris steps into the restaurant on an early Thursday evening, before business has really picked up. Reservations haven’t kicked up in earnest and neither have walk-ins. He slips into the kitchen, through the door, looking thoroughly out of place in his scarf and cardigan.

“Ah,” Chris says, seeing Yuuri. “I wanted to give this to you myself and your  **maître d'** let me in.” He pulls a magazine from his bag and gestures toward Yuuri with it. “ I know JJ’s office got a copy but I don’t know how much time you spend with him.”

Yuuri wipes his hands on his apron and steps away from the shrimp he’s peeling. He takes the magazine and he opens the spread. 

It’s not a picture of the restaurant or JJ, like it usually is. Like it  _ always _ is. Yuuri usually gives JJ the spotlight-- he likes it so much and he does so much good with it-- but he’s nowhere to be seen. 

The spread for the story is a large, black and white picture of  _ Yuuri _ , in his worn out Hemmingway shirt and everything, mid-laugh. His glasses are pulled back into his messy hair, and his mouth is grinning. There’s the component parts of the makeshift breakfast out on the counter, but they’re disassembled. 

The headline is a quote, in large, heavy letters--  _ “Yuuri Katsuki is the Wizard in the Emerald City.” _

Yuuri looks at it incredulously, and his disbelief grows when he sees that JJ said it. 

Yuuri looks at it for a long minute, the sound of the kitchen fading into low static while he tries to process it. 

The picture. The quote.

“Yuuri--  _ Yuuri _ ,” someone says, snapping their fingers, and Yuuri looks up and Phichit is there, putting his hand in the magazine and pulling it away. 

“Hey,” he says. “You okay?”   
Yuuri nods, jerkily. “Fine,” he says. “Yeah, fine.”

Phichit nods, but he looks dubious. “We have dinner service to get through,” he says. “Take a breather?”   
Yuuri nods again. “Sure thing,” he says, and he turns back to Chris, the magazine now rolled into a tight tube. 

“I didn’t realize-- I thought it was about the  _ restaurant _ ,” Yuuri says. 

Chris shrugs. “It still is,” he says.”But there’s only so much we can say about it without, well, talking about you.”

Yuuri nods. Feels something manic well up in his bones, into his throat and mouth. 

“Thanks,” he says. “I’ll-- I have the service. I’ll text you? Tell you what I think?”   
Chris nods. Raises his hand. “I’ll be on my way,” he says. 

Yuuri nods. 

Pulls on the collar of his shirt before heading back into the kitchen, straightening it, confirming its steady hold on the column of his throat. 

“Hot pan,” Phichit calls, turning at a station to move a saute pan from a stove eye to a steel countertop. He pulls a chicken thigh from the pan to rest it on the cutting board before adding cold butter and onions to the pan with a bundle of fresh thyme. 

“It wasn’t...it’s not  _ bad _ , is it?” Phichit asks, Yuuri standing beside him and pulling the veins from the shrimp, putting the heads and shells in a container for broth. 

Yuuri grits his teeth, trying to find the right words. 

“I never say the right thing,” is what he lands on. “JJ always does, though. That’s why I’m backstage.”   
Phichit takes a breath the way he does when he wants to say something but  _ isn’t _ saying something. 

Yuuri and Phichit have known each other for a long time now-- from when Yuuri thought he was in college to be a linguist and when Phichit was  _ actually _ getting his degree in communications. And although a lot has happened between them living in Detroit together and them winding up here together, there’s something fundamentally unchanged. Phichit knows Yuuri as well as Yuuri’s own family does, maybe even better. There’s security in that familiarity. There’s security in Phichit standing in Yuuri’s kitchen and helping Yuuri untangle the irrational terror that stalks him with every sudden phone call and interview and photograph and conversation with a stranger.

“I think you grossly overestimate JJ’s social graces,” Phichit says. 

Yuuri laughs. 

“Are you koji-curing those?” Phichit asks. 

Yuuri nods. “For the bisque, yeah,” he says. “We’ll do broth tomorrow.”

“Cool,” Phichit answers. “Put that shit away. We have a dinner service.”

Yuuri huffs a short laugh. “Okay,” he says. “Okay.”

* * *

 

Viktor keeps his phone in the lockers when he’s in the darkroom. He doesn’t like the idea of  _ any _ stray light falling inside, ruining his work. It makes things a little weird with contacting him, something he’s had to make clear to editors and publishers. 

It’s not that Viktor prints in a forgotten skill, it’s that Viktor prints with methods that are used more in the gallery scene than the commercial scene at this point. Most of the editing Viktor does is painful trial and error at a slow, uneven pace. Dodging and burning tend to be experimental and time consuming, and he’s sure if he could manage to do it digitally, he would. 

But it also means Viktor’s work has a reputation in the city. Even though his turnaround is about a day or two slower and he doesn’t work in color, he makes clean, sharp work. He makes beautiful black and white images, which are having something of a stylistic renaissance. 

Today, though, is hour six in the dark room trying to get the shadow on a model’s collar bone to fall  _ just _ right and he’s all but ready to start screaming. 

Viktor runs the print under water to wash of the last of the chemicals and hangs it to dry. He looks at it for a long moment and closes his eyes. Takes a deep breath. 

He feels a fluttering in his chest, and he rests his hand there. 

“Yes, Mama,” Viktor murmurs.

He slides his negatives back into the holder and puts them in his binder. He looks at his drying prints again for a long moment. He grabs the four that he likes the best and heads out. Unlocks his locker and waves to the clerk and slips out into the city. 

And he’s walking when he drifts and--

The restaurant, from a few weeks ago. It’s lit, full, in the night. The golden light leaks out toward the street. 

Viktor looks through the windows for a moment. Hungry. 

His fingers twitch. 

On the film, the chef’s features  _ glowed _ , is the thing. Some people look good in person and some people look good photographed. And maybe it’s something about how much time Viktor spent looking at the curve of his mouth or the shape of his graceful, skilled hands. At the laughter in his body and face. At the shape of his body behind an apron and under a shirt. 

Viktor licks his lips. 

He steps into the restaurant and approaches the front desk, where a gentleman in a black t-shirt stands, looking intently at a paper list. 

He looks up, at Viktor. He’s a tall man with dark hair and mischievous eyes. 

“Ah!” he says. “Do you have a reservation?”

Viktor shakes his head. “I don’t,” he says. “Could I get a table for one?”   
The man looks at the clipboard for a moment, and says, looking up at him, “Can I get your name?”

“Viktor,” he says. “Nikiforov.”

The man nods, before he says, “Should be twenty minutes. We’ll call your name.”   
Viktor nods back. “Thank you,” he says. 

The man smiles. He clearly thinks his smile is particularly dazzling. 

Viktor sits on a bench near the door and looks over at his prints now that they’ve dried. He gnaws on his lip. One of them is  _ almost _ perfect. He pulls out his notebook and makes a few notes and stashes the now  _ mostly _ dry prints into his binder and puts it all back in his bag. 

He pulls out a book and reads. 

And eventually someone calls his name and he’s directed to a small table and he sits down. He looks over the menu, and eventually someone emerges from the kitchen and--

It’s Yuuri, the chef. His hair is slicked back from his head and his skin is flushed and dewy with sweat. His glasses are pulled back and he’s wearing chef’s whites and an apron. 

He looks at him, a little taken aback.

“Oh,” he says. “Oh-- don’t--” He takes the menu out of his hands and shakes his head. “Can I-- can I make you something? Something else?”   
Viktor swallows. He nods. “I would eat whatever you make for me,” he says.

Yuuri somehow manages to go a little redder. He nods. “I’ll-- okay. Do you have allergies or-- or dietary restrictions?”

Viktor shakes his head.

Yuuri nods and disappears. 

Viktor watches him go. 

He looks at the light in the restaurant. The warm, golden light and air. The soft sound of conversation and the slow drift of music he doesn’t recognize. 

After a few minutes, a bowl lands in front of him. It’s a small parcel of pastry, round and small, topped with a single, floating chive.

Viktor looks from it back to a young man with a shock of red hair and friendly, boyish features. 

“Brie en croute,” he says. He nods and dashes off, before returning with a tall glass full of sparkling wine. 

“Sekt,” he says. “Yuur-- Chef Katsuki said that it would pair particularly nicely with the green apple.”

Viktor smiles. “Thank you,” he says, before carefully sliding his fork through the crisp pastry. Vividly green and ivory fall from it. He looks over the table and a small basket of toast is nearby. He spreads it onto the toast. 

It’s  _ delicious _ . The apple is bright, but the texture on it is velvety and gorgeous. The cheese is almost floral and the mutual sweetness of the puree and cheese is cut by the allium flavor of the chives. 

It’s  _ wonderful _ . Decadent. And of course, the wine is quite good with it as well. 

He finishes just as another plate arrives.

The same waiter slides the plate gently in front of him. 

“Duck confit with pappardelle, arugula and white pepper sauce,” he says. He slides a cocktail glass in front of him. “Whiskey sour.”

“Thank you,” Viktor says. 

And it is, of course, rich and lovely and  _ beautiful _ . Earthy and homey somehow. The pasta is wide and thick and eggy and the sauce is as wonderfully rich. Viktor feels it all as a rush, overwhelming and wonderful. 

Viktor has never had anything as good as this. He’s not sure he could. He feels warmth, spreading from his lips through his whole body. It’s magical, almost. Unreal. 

He eats every bite. 

The cocktail is, of course, also delicious. 

And as Viktor finishes, Yuuri comes back, holding a plate and another glass.

He slides it in front of Viktor and takes the empty plate. 

Viktor looks at him. 

“This is the most delicious thing I’ve ever eaten,” he says, honestly. 

Yuuri looks ever so slightly taken aback. 

He places another plate in front of Viktor. “Castella,” he says. “It’s uh, it’s like cheesecake.”

Viktor looks at it-- it’s a talle rectangle, golden brown on top and dusted lightly with powdered sugar, a small dollop of what Viktor guesses is whipped cream beside it. 

Viktor looks at him and he says, “Please-- sit.”

Yuuri looks at him and looks at the seat opposite him and sits down cautiously. 

“The duck,” he says. “It was unbelievable.”

“You didn’t think it needed something?” Yuuri asks. “I was thinking of adding a bay leaf somewhere in there and maybe when the clementines come in I’d--”   
“Never have I had anything like it,” Viktor says. “It made me feel warm all the way in my bones. How did you do it?”   
Yuuri smiles. He shrugs. 

“Chris brought by the...the article he wrote. With your photographs,” he says. “You made me look good.”

“It was not hard,” Viktor says. “You’re beautiful and you photograph so well. I would love to see you work more. If I can.”

Yuuri huffs a laugh, just barely. His eyes drift away from Viktor’s face, to the tablecloth.  _ His eyes are brown,  _ Viktor realizes. Translated out of silver gelatin, his eyes are brown. 

Viktor slides the fork into the castella. The texture is strange, light and airy and wobbling ever so slightly. It’s incredible. He loves it.

“This is incredible,” he says, after taking a bite. “I love this.”

Yuuri smiles. “My mom taught me how to make it,” he says. “Back home, her family ran a hot spring and an inn so she grew up cooking and she taught me basically everything I know.”

Viktor smiles at him. He gestures to the plate. “Would you like a bite?” he asks.

Yuuri shakes his head. “Thank you, though,” he says. “I’m glad you like it. That you liked it.”

“Of course I do,” he says. Viktor licks his lips. Catches the egg and vanilla and sugar flavor again. “I never learned how to cook. I’m envious.”

“I don’t cook like this for myself,” he replies. 

“How do you cook for yourself?” Viktor asks. 

Yuuri shrugs. Looks away from the table and back toward the restaurant.

Viktor looks at the edge of his neck. The long shape of it. His lovely, round face and dark hair. 

Viktor swallows. “ Could I see you, maybe, when you aren’t at work?” He asks. 

“Oh,” Yuuri says. “I-- I’m--”   
“Yuuri!” Someone calls. “Service rush!”

Yuuri gets up from the table and smiles, a little uncomfortably. “I have to-- I have a job. Tell JJ-- uh-- I’ll tell him that you’re-- that we know each other. Have a great evening. Thanks for letting me pilot my November menu on you.”

And he slips away and Viktor watches him go, and Viktor, despite having just eaten a meal, feels hungry

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> did ya'll know....that i fuckin'.....love to cook


	4. Chapter 4

Yuuri stumbles up the stairs to his apartment and sighs, his whole chest rising and falling, trying to stave off the awful, shaky feeling vibrating into his body. He unlocks the door and throws his bag on the floor and slams the door shut. He stands in the entry and focuses on his breathing. Focuses on steadying it. 

Yuuri’s been fighting the feeling since he got the article, and the threatening intensity of it only increased when Viktor-- beautiful, kind, Viktor stepped in. 

And then, when at Phichit’s urging, Yuuri went and  _ talked  _ to him. 

So it’s finally three in the morning and Yuuri has enough time, now that the service is over and everything is clean, to really have this panic attack he’s been staving off for the past eight or so hours. 

Yuuri slides down his wall and lets his breathing overwhelm himself. 

It’s like a canyon, long and wide, that Yuuri is at the bottom of. And all that’s there is Yuuri and the cascading echoes of his breath. His crushing,  _ desperate _ desire for oxygen and the avalanche of his own hyperventilation. 

Panic is a canyon, and if there’s anything Yuuri has learned about it, it’s that he can make it through. He  _ has _ made it through. He just has to keep going and follow it out. 

Yuuri’s not sure how long it takes him. He loses track of it, in the thick of it all. But he does know when he comes out of it, because of the buzzing echoing feeling it presents. The emptiness that follows panic washes over him like a wave and after a little while longer, Yuuri grabs the magazine from out of his bag.

He doesn’t read the article. He’s not sure he could bear to read the clumsy things he said himself or really  _ anything _ anyone else has said about him. 

He does study the photographs. 

There’s something about the way he looks in them-- Yuuri realizes, looking at them, that he must be a stranger to himself. He looks so  _ different _ , so much more interesting and alive and professional. 

And there’s something about how Viktor has gotten how his hands look, delicately holding a cured egg yolk. There’s something about the focus on them and something about how the light hits them. Yuuri looks, fascinated, at himself through Viktor’s eyes. 

It’s a little overwhelming, and it makes something at the back of Yuuri’s neck prickle. 

He stands up and sets his rice cooker on. He steps into the bathroom and undresses and washes the day off of his skin.

He’s monumentally tired. Today was long and tomorrow probably won’t be much shorter. 

He climbs out of the shower and puts a pot of water on the stove to boil. He halves and slices and avocado.

He thinks about his own hands, and he thinks about how Viktor sees them while he does all of this. 

The water comes up and he drops the temperature before stirring in a tablespoon or so of white vinegar. He cracks two eggs into teacups and carefully glides the egg into the water. 

As the eggs finish poaching, the rice cooker beeps. 

Yuuri loads a bowl with brown rice and adds to it the poached eggs and a tidy shingling of avocado. Adds some soy sauce and takes a bite and he chews and chews and then he’s hit by the realization that what he wants is the small tupperware of gochujang Seung-gil made as an experiment a while back. 

Yuuri puts the bowl down and digs around in his condiments before he finds it. It’s still bright red and so rich in that somethingness of itself to make Yuuri’s eyes water.

He fishes out a spoonful of it and stirs it into the bowl. 

He adds another. And another, and one more, for good measure. His dinner is now lurid red and searingly bright and warm. A slow burning fire spreads from his lips to his stomach and to the bottoms of his feet. Yuuri eats ravenously and when he finishes his bowl, he is suffused by the feeling. Heat from his mouth follows all through his body, leaving him gasping. He thinks about water, but something about that lacks satisfaction. 

The heat is revelatory, and it’s so good that Yuuri can’t be upset about what he’s eaten. 

He closes his rice cooker and slinks to his bedroom. He traces the warmth over his lips, and his cool fingertips leave a ghost of their touch. 

Yuuri lets his other hand graze the edge between his shirt and his boxers, the sliver of belly slipping out there. 

And then--

It’s heat. 

It’s liquid heat. Pours down his body is solid, drenching sheets. Leaves electricity and temper in its wake. Slides down him and off him until he can’t stand it.

A long hand, steady from the side of his face, down his chest and to his hip. A hand somehow hotter than his overheated skin, his sweating skin. A hand burning pleasantly-- capsaicin burn like a lick of oily lightning. 

Yuuri cries out. Twists his hand into the sheets. Throws his head back. 

And kisses, wet down his side, across and over his hip, from one protrusive bone to the other. 

Yuuri’s breath stutters in his throat. 

The mouth sucks against his hip, leading into the parted divot between his legs. Yuuri cries aloud, and the heat traces over him. Crescendos and leaves his nerves dancing and his body overcome with pleasure. 

Hot pleasure. Red pleasure. Warm and awakening in him a thirst he does not want to slake and one he’s not sure he could. 

Yuuri’s own hands dive between his legs and he squirms and shifts and cries. 

Orgasm comes over Yuuri like sunrise. 

Warm and red and unrelenting. 

Redness like a slow burning coal comes over Yuuri, from his toes and all through his body. Feels the redness as sleep overcomes him, keeping him warm. 


	5. Chapter 5

Oyster season sweeps in suddenly, as delightfully as fall wind and gourds and chestnuts. The water turns chilly and Yuuri’s suppliers send him beautiful, clear oysters in cases, sitting next to each other on ice. 

Yuuri looks at them all and his mouth waters. 

Phichit looks at them and he  _ groans _ . 

“I thought after last year we decided they weren’t worth it?” He says. His voice lilts hopefully. 

“You did,” Yuuri says. “JJ and I decided that they were a good seasonal addition. And the columnists like how accessible we make them. Come on. You know this is too important for us to leave with the hands.”

Phichit sighs again. Swears a blue streak in Thai before throwing his hands in the air and turning to rifle through the miscellany drawer to get their gloves and oyster knives. 

There’s a skill to it. An art that Yuuri learned from his sister, wearing sturdy gardening gloves and using the knife his mother dug out of a similar kitchen drawer. It’s a skill that his father never got the hang of but that seems instinctive to his mother. A skill she taught Mari and then Mari taught Yuuri. 

Yuuri loves oysters. He likes them in late fall and deep winter the most. 

JJ likes them because their a prestige food. One that they can put on the menu to make their establishment look impressive to the high rollers. JJ is a simple man with simple appetites and interests, and it makes working with him genuinely joyful. No request turned down. No conversation he’s not willing to have or at least start. JJ is all surface. No manipulations or plots within plots. Nothing at all like what Yuuri left in Detroit. 

Phichit comes to the bench, still grumbling, and he says, “How many for right now?”

“A dozen,” Yuuri says. “I have the salamander ready already and the compound butter to go. I just want to taste them before we put them out tonight. And everyone else should try them, too.”

Yuuri slides on a glove and holds the oyster in his hand, the cup of the shell nestled firmly between the meat of his thumb and the interior row  of his knuckles. The knife pierces between the hinge on the upper and bottom shell, and he twists it. There’s a quirk to it, a twisting of his wrist, and the shell pries open. He sweeps the edge of the knife upward, catching the abductor, and then runs it underneath to catch the same muscle below. Yuuri looks at it, at it’s unique uglybeauty, nestled wetly in the shining silver of its shell. Yuuri’s mouth waters. 

Phichit sighs in front of him. “Yuuri, eat the damn thing.” 

Yuuri lick his lips. “No,” he says. “No, I--”

Phichit rolls his eyes

Yuuri tips the oyster into his mouth. 

Oh, it is so good. 

Briny but sweet. Sweet in the way only things of the sea could be. Oily, almost. Posessing something elemental and rich. Heavy on his tongue and heady in his blood. 

“Yuuri!” JJ calls from the door. 

Yuuri chokes and opens his eyes, hand in front of his mouth. JJ strides into the kitchen with-- with Chris and Viktor. 

Yuuri swallows, painfully. 

“Hey,” Yuuri says. “I’m just-- I’m trying a dish before we send it out tonight. Wait, you can help me-- stay.”

“Hi, JJ,” Phichit says, diplomatically, his hand resting on his cocked out hip. “How are you? What are you doing back here with Chris and his photographer?”

JJ grins. “I wanted to thank them for the good press they gave us and then Viktor mentioned that he came last week and of course I  _ had _ to bring them back to see what you’re working with this week.”

Phichit’s eyes settle closed, as if calling on some saintly patience he can’t quite find.

Chris turns to Viktor and says, “He hadn’t told me you’d come back.”

“No,” Phichit says, “I hadn’t.”

“Oh,” Viktor says, looking at Yuuri’s hands, “oysters! Are they as good as everyone says?”

Yuuri looks at him, startled. “Have you never had one before?”

Viktor shakes his head. “I never had seafood before I moved here and it’s so expensive!”

Yuuri grabs another oyster and opens it. Rubs his bare pinky around the rim of the shell to pull away the sand and grit along the edge of the shell. Yuuri offers it to him and Viktor looks at it befuddled. 

“Do I? How do i?”

Yuuri lifts his hands upward, for Viktor to slip his own fingertips under. 

“You, sort of,” Yuuri says. “You sort just, you eat it.”

And he stands on his toes and  _ tips _ the oyster into Viktor’s mouth. 

Viktor’s eyes flutter closed. Something falls over his face. 

The feeling is indescribable. To watch Viktor’s face as he tastes that unique, ocean sweetness for the first time. 

Yuuri feels blood in every inch of his face. The flush intense and overwhelming. 

“Oh,” Viktor says. 

“Oh my god,” Phichit remarks. 

JJ chuckles. “Wait until you try what Yuuri does with them.”

Yuuri feels himself go even redder. His fingers part from Viktor’s and Yuuri lays the shell down on the bench. Viktor smiles. His fingers drift over his lips. 

“Amazing,” He murmurs. 

“Yeah,” Phichit says loudly, the word almost a full sentence by itself. “Yuuri, how  _ are  _ you going to prepare these?”

“A riff on Rockefeller,” JJ says. “Wipe Citadel off the  _ map _ across town with it.”   
“Chestnuts,” Yuuri says. “Chestnut breadcrumbs and sheepsmilk cheese with butter and parsley.”

“A play on oyster stuffing,” Chris says, a chuckle barely help in his throat.

“Yeah,” Yuuri says. 

Fall and Winter, is what Yuuri thinks. Growth in the sleeping seasons and hard work. Determination. 

And of course, the inexorable sea. 

“Oh, my goodness,” Viktor says, mouth still behind his fingers. 

“Let me-- wait fifteen minutes,” Yuuri stammers.

JJ laughs. “Yuuri, you’re such a gracious host! We should have you interview more often!”

“What?” Yuuri says. “No-- no, JJ, no-- absolutely not.”   
“Oh, no,” Phichit says. “No, I think JJ has a point.”   
“I think you’re right,” Viktor murmurs. 

“Yuuri, your boyfriend must be a lucky man,” Chris comments. 

“I’m not dating anyone,” Yuuri says, picking up another oyster and shucking it. He repeats the action. “Phi, can you pass me a plate?”   
Phichit hand him a dish to go in the salamander and Yuuri lays the oysters in it. He pipes the dressing on top of the oysters and lets them go for a moment or two before pulling it. 

And Viktor reaches into a shell with a fork and spears the thing and eats it, and he seems to take some sort of warm delight in it.

Like he almost understands. 

“JJ,” Chris says, finishing the bite. “You know I can’t, ethically, review the restaurant again.”

“You could tweet us,” Phichit says, instead. 

“You  _ could _ tweet us,” JJ repeats.

“I could tweet you,” Chris says, shrugging. 

Yuuri doesn’t use twitter. 

“Twitter,” Viktor says, shaking his head. 

“Most people aren’t  _ hermits _ , Viktor,” Chris murmurs. “And have at least one kind of social media. Or an email they use more frequently than every other month.”

“I don’t like computers,” Viktor comments, shrugging. 

“JJ, do you want us to curry more favor, or can Yuuri and I plan our dinner service?” Phichit says, arms crossed. 

JJ laughs. “Alright, alright,” he says. “Let’s get out of their hair and discuss this tweet Chris is gonna send.”   
And the three of them slip out of the kitchen and Phichit says, “You should give Viktor your number already. Maybe he had a regular dinner with you, he’d stop putting a wrench in our service.”   
Yuuri rolls his eyes. “Phichit, come on,” he says. “He’s not like that.”

“Not like  _ what _ ?” Phichit demands. “Into you?”

“No one’s  _ into _ me,” Yuuri says. Even his ex wasn’t into him, not really. 

“Yuuri,” Phichit sighs, shucking an oyster. “You can be this stupid or this stubborn, you can’t be both.  _ Most _ people are into you, and more men are ‘like that’ then you think.”

“Hey!” Yurio calls, tying his apron. “I’m not shucking those! Allergy!”

“We know!” Phchit calls back. “You’re on soup tonight!”   
Yurio rolls his eyes and tucks his long blonde hair under his baseball cap. 

“Pretty big of yourself to think you could be trusted to shuck the oysters right anyway,” Phichit calls, and Yuuri laughs. 

Yurio huffs. “The pig would let me,” he spits.

“I wouldn’t,” Yuuri says. “It was  _ years _ before my mother would let me try.”

Phichit laughs. “Hell yeah,” he murmurs, shucking an oyster.

* * *

 

“Please,” Viktor says. “I’ll shoot your wedding for free. I just want to get to  _ know  _ him.”

JJ grins. Chris looks like he’d rather be anywhere but here. 

“I’ll put a table on the books for you,” he says. 

“You  _ can’t _ be serious-- Viktor, I could just be your wingman--”   
JJ elbows Chris viciously in the ribs. 

“Please,’ Viktor repeats.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: next chapter i'll starting use plot  
> also me: fifteen hundred words of yuuri cooking and it turning him on


	6. Chapter 6

Viktor stands in the grocery store and looks at the packages of instant brown rice and he sighs, heavily.   
He’s hungry, but nothing has been satisfying him.   
Yakov is not a good cook; a man who came of age in strange in-between periods, with family that was used to doing even more with even less. The dinners of Viktor’s childhood are punctuated with root vegetables and grey meat and white carbohydrates and knobs of melting butter and salt. The dinners since have come overwhelmingly from delivery places or mostly already cooked on their own in packages. Viktor doesn’t really know what he’s doing in front of a stove, and the thing is--  
Viktor licks his lips, looking at a box of instant couscous, thinking of briny oysters and salty eggs and rich, fatty duck.   
Viktor looks at a package of something called wild rice and thinks of airy, beautiful cheesecake sitting heavy on his tongue.   
Viktor is hungry. It’s a different kind of hunger, though. One that he can’t seem to fill.   
Viktor takes a deep breath and sighs.   
“Oh,” he hears, and he turns around and--  
 _Well, speak of the devil,_ he supposes.   
“Yuuri,” he says, smiling.   
Yuuri is wearing a beaten denim jacket and sweats. His hair seems to be sticking up in every conceivable direction. He looks tired; behind his glasses, heavy bags ring his eyes.   
“Viktor,” Yuuri answers. “I didn’t realize you shopped nearby.”  
“I live just a few blocks away,” Viktor says. “The market is right between my apartment and the lab.”  
Yuuri looks surprised. “A lab?” He asks.   
“For film,” he says. “To develop the pictures. I don’t work digitally.” He looks at Yuuri’s basket, which right now has two large lemons, something bundled in a bag from produce, and some kind of meat. “Your day off?” He asks.  
Yuuri huffs. “Phichit sent me out of the kitchen,” he says.   
“But you’re going to cook anyway,” Viktor says, a chuckle barely held on his lips.   
Yuuri shrugs. “Gotta eat,” he says. He casts an eye into Viktor’s basket. “I see you’re not going to cook.”  
Viktor shrugs. “I can’t...I can’t really cook. I never...Yakov couldn’t and when I moved out here I never had time to...learn, I guess.”  
Yuuri looks different in the grocery store. He looks smaller, almost. He doesn’t look like an unimpeachable artist, he looks just like Yuuri. Like someone Viktor knows. A friend of his. Viktor wonders, suddenly, what he looks like in the grocery store. Maybe like some sort of tall, lost child.   
“I could help,” Yuuri says. “If you don’t-- don’t mind.”  
“I couldn’t exile you to a kitchen on your day off,” Viktor says. “Especially when your friend explicitly sent you out of the kitchen.”  
Yuuri rolls his eyes. “I’m just tired. I’m going to cook at home anyway. Phichit’s overreacting. I’m fine. I’m fine.”  
Viktor notes how rehearsed the sentence is.   
He knows how lonely it is.   
“You would have to help me cook it,” he says. “Not just pick it out. And you would have to stay in my apartment with me and my dog for a while, just so I could make sure you were really relaxing on your day off. Maybe we would have to have a glass of wine. Maybe I would walk to the movie theatre with you afterward. Maybe.”  
Yuuri flushes just a little.  
Viktor smiles. “Do you mind dogs?”

* * *

  
Viktor stands in the produce section and looks overwhelmed. It started when Yuuri asked if he could grabs a couple of shallots and Viktor came back looking worried holding a bundle of scallions.   
Yuuri has thrown those into the basket anyway-- scallion pancakes are pretty easy to throw together, anyway, and cheap, and the shallots are easy enough to grab right there. He already has a set of chicken thighs in his basket and he grabs a pint of mushrooms. A bottle of white wine and some thyme and a long package of fettucine.   
Viktor looks at all of these things with an expression of mild bewilderment.   
“Do you have milk?” Yuuri asks.  
“Yes,” Viktor says. “I think it’s skim? It’s the blue kind.”  
Yuuri nods and grabs a pint of cream from the shelf. He shakes his head. What kind of a fool would deprive beautiful, smart Viktor the pleasures of butterfat?   
Viktor, who is tall enough to reach the things on the top shelf. Viktor who looks almost like a model in the grocery store, his beautiful silver hair hanging in his eyes. Viktor, who smiles at Yuuri and teases him just a little. Just the right amount.   
Yuuri licks his lips. He grabs a wedge of crumbling, beautiful parmesean.   
The file into line in front of the cashier, who rings them up. Yuuri pays as a child manages to distract Viktor, and he places the groceries in a bag and grabs it.   
“Oh, no,” Viktor says, turning his attention back to Yuuri as he grabs the grocery bag. “This will not do, not at all. I must carry the groceries, especially after you were so kind to help me locate them and then pay for them.”  
Yuuri barely suppresses a laugh as Viktor reaches into his arms and pulls the bag away. It’s not terribly heavy, and Viktor supports the bottom carefully and looks suitably beautiful with the tops of the scallions reaching out and brushing against his fair face. Yuuri wishes he’d grabbed flowers, or at least more herbs with beautiful, feathery edges.   
“So you’re not from the city,” Yuuri says, walking beside him.   
“Yes,” Viktor says. “I moved here from St. Petersburg when I was nineteen or so. I have citizenship from my father, I’m told, though I never knew him.”  
“Are you...close to your mother?” Yuuri asks.   
Viktor chuckles, obliquely. “Ah, yes,” he says. “As close as I could be, I suppose. She died while she labored.”  
“Oh, no,” Yuuri says. “Oh-- I’m-- I’m sorry, I didn’t mean--“  
Viktor laughs this time, actual laughter. “Yuuri, Yuuri, it’s fine. It’s fine. I didn’t know her. You didn’t hurt me. I promise.”  
The neighborhood shifts a little as they go, and eventually they come to a tall, thin building.   
Viktor’s eyes flit from the building back to Yuuri. “This is...this is me. My building.”  
Yuuri nods.   
And he follows Viktor up a few flights of stairs and to a green door with a number six on it. Viktor fiddles with the key and unlocks the door and the most beautiful, precious dog with caramel colored fur and watery, happy eyes pads up to them to greet them.   
“Hello, Makka,” Viktor greets. “This is Yuuri, our guest for dinner.”  
Yuuri is immediately on the floor with the dog, saying hello and scratching behind her ears and cooing.   
“Her name is Makka?” Yuuri asks.   
“Short for Makkachin,” Viktor says. “She’s a good girl.”  
“I can tell!” Yuuri answers, scratching her a little more before stepping fully into the apartment and shutting the door.  
It’s small, a little more than a stuido. Everything is extremely clean and mercilessly organized, binders sitting full on bookshelves, throw pillows stacked neatly on the couch.   
Viktor places the bag on the counter and says, “Okay, so what do we do first?”  
Yuuri pulls the groceries from the bag and arranges them on the counter. “So we need to slice the mushrooms and mince the shallot. Do you have a sautee pan?”  
Viktor pulls a large, cast iron skillet.  
“That’ll work,” Yuuri says.

* * *

  
Yuuri doesn’t say anything about the fact that the end and beginning of Viktor’s kitchen equipment is paltry. One pan, a couple of pots, one cutting board, two knives. He doesn’t say anything unknd about the way Viktor holds the knife, adjusting his fingers; his arm wrapped around Viktor’s side to rock the knife through the mushrooms, the shallot, the pile of scallions. He smiles as he dusts the chicken thighs with flour, salt, and pepper.   
The apartment smells so _good_ as Yuuri slides the chicken thighs into the pan with oil. After they sear, he pulls them out and adds the shallots, the mushrooms. Adds the wine and some broth from a carton he picked up at the store. Slides the chicken thighs back in and covers Viktor’s skillet.  
“And now we wait,” Yuuri says. “Nothing too fancy.”  
Viktor pours the remaining wine into two glasses-- a skill he does possess. Hands one to Yuuri and they stand, at the countertop, taking a sip of the wine.   
“You just...threw it together,” he says. “Just like that.”  
Yuuri flushes a little. “It wasn’t hard,” he says. “Just chicken and mushrooms. Chicken thighs are always good. Mushrooms are always good.”  
“My apartment has never smelled this good,” Viktor says. “Honestly, usually it just smells like vinegar.”  
“Do you like pickles?” Yuuri asks, looking from his wine back to Viktor.  
Viktor shakes his head. “I use it to develop film,” he says. He points to his bathroom. “Right in there.”  
“Oh, really?” Yuuri asks, craning his neck to look deeper into Viktor’s bathroom from the kitchen. “Right in there?”  
Viktor nods. “Where the magic happens,” he says. “As they say. Would you like the tour?”  
Yuuri shrugs. “It only seems fair. I mean, you keep interrupting in my workplace.”  
Viktor chuckles. Put his wine down and leads Yuuri from the kitchen to his small bathroom.  
“So,” Viktor says. “This is my development lab.” He gestures to the blacked out window. He opens the cabinet under the sink, pulling out the bin with his blackout bag and can opener and film tanks and reels.  
Yuuri looks at all of it and says, “Are you going to demonstrate?”  
Viktor licks his lips. “I guess it would only be fair,” he says. “So--so first, we need darkness.”  
Yuuri nods. Viktor reaches behind him and shuts the bathroom door. He looks at Yuuri and flicks the lightswitch.  
The light flies out of the room. It seems to be replaced by the quiet, strange noise of their trapped breath.  
“What next?” Yuuri asks.  
“I have to open the film reels,” Viktor says. He grabs the can opener from the bin, where it’s placed. He reaches out and in the darkness finds Yuuri’s hand. And he nests the can opener into his hand, his fingers fumbling over Yuuri’s, catching the smooth detail of his fingernails and long scratches and scars from knives, from life in the kitchen.   
Viktor grabs a film reel from the bin, bending down from where it rests sitting on top of the toilet.   
He pulls Yuuri’s other hand forward. Guides his fingers to feel the notch where the plastic reel starts. “And then you-- you guide the film into the reel,” he says. He takes Yuuri’s other hand, pulling the can opener from it so that Yuuri can feel how the reel twists, to load the film in.   
“And then you put it in the tank,” Viktor says. “But it can take a while to get it right. Sometimes the film just doesn’t want to load.”  
“Oh,” Yuuri says.   
“So sometimes I just have to stand in here, in the dark,” Viktor says. “Trying to get it right.”  
Viktor can’t see Yuuri in the darkness. But he can hear him. He can hear his warm breath. He thinks maybe he can hear his heartbeat, if he focuses just right.   
Viktor closes his eyes and he sees almost an afterimage behind his eyelids. A warm, golden image of Yuuri, his cheeks flushed, his hair mussed. His pink lips and beautiful brown eyes. Yuuri in full, golden, living color.   
“Viktor?” Yuuri asks.  
Viktor lets his hand drift up from Yuuri’s hands to the sides of his arms, flecked lightly with goosebumps . Viktor follows up his shoulders and to his collarbone. Up his warm neck to cradle his jaw.   
“Yuuri?” Viktor asks.  
Yuuri nods. Viktor feels it.   
Viktor pulls him forward and kisses him.   
And it is like seeing in color for the first time.

 


	7. Chapter 7

Viktor kisses Yuuri in the dark. 

His hands on his jaw, his body close. Yuuri can feel him nearby, in the dark, even without touching him. He can feel like a radiant pressure the long, lean line of his body. He can feel the press of his nose against his cheek and his fingers against the bones of his jaw. He can feel him over him, inches taller. He can feel the soft fringe of his hair draping over his own features. He can feel his warm, soft mouth, lips parting ever so slightly. 

Yuuri can feel everything; three years since last he was touched like this. It’s overwhelming. It’s too much. It’s not enough. Yuuri can’t believe its real. He can’t believe the darkened bathroom is real and he can’t believe Viktor is real before him. 

Yuuri reaches out and lays his hand on Viktor’s chest. Feels the material of his t-shirt under his fingers and his firm, warm chest underneath. Feels his rising and falling chest and a little further over, he feels the subtle thunder of his heartbeat. 

Yuuri pulls away for a moment and whispers, softly, “Viktor, the chicken.”

“Damn the chicken,” Viktor murmurs. 

Yuuri laughs, the sound tumbling and dancing out of him, filling in the spaces between Viktor’s breaths. 

“We can turn off the stove,” Yuuri says. “Slide it into the oven. If we keep it on the stove though, it’ll just burn.”

“Okay,” Viktor says. “Okay.” 

Neither of them move, caught so close to each other, tangled in the darkness and each others’ breath. 

Yuuri moves and turns on the bathroom light. He hadn’t realized how small the space was-- barely more than a closet with both of them in it, blinking in the sudden light over the vanity. 

Viktor looks flushed. He looks beautiful, like he always does. 

Yuuri catches the barest glimpse of his own reflection as he turns to open the door. He tries not to dwell too much on it .

He turns off the stove. What was a simmer has been graded to a braise, instead. He sets the oven low and slides the pan into it, and when he turns around, Viktor is there, looking at him. 

His eyes are so blue. So bright and so sparkling. 

Yuuri swallows. Watches the barest dip of Viktor’s mouth, his tongue darting out to lick his bottom lip. 

Yuuri wishes, suddenly, that they were at his apartment. That he could pull out spoonfuls of gochujang for Viktor to try; imagine his fine features flushed and sweating from the redness of birds eye chilis; his breath caught and gasping on the hibiscus-toned hot sauce Yuuri has fermenting on his countertop. 

Yuuri is hungry, suddenly, and it is this hunger that drives him back across the kitchen and into Viktor’s arms. Yuuri is hungry, and Viktor kisses him with his mouth cast open and his sweet voice catching on the air. Yuuri is hungry, he’s hungry and the hunger burns in him, low in his belly like coal, like fire, like pepper, like redness. 

Yuuri groans as Viktor’s hands rove over his body to grasp at his ass, as they travel up his sides and hover and flutter over his ribs and the small of his back. Yuuri groans and Viktor’s mouth moves over his jaw; over his neck; over his collarbones. Viktor’s mouth bites and sucks and nibbles; Viktor’s mouth, somehow, consumes him and leaves even more of Yuuri there. 

Yuuri realizes, sometime with his nose pressed against the long line of Viktor’s neck, that Viktor must be hungry, too. 

“Viktor,” Yuuri whispers. 

“Yuuri, Yuuri,” Viktor replies. 

Viktor kisses him, he kisses him deeply, like he means it. And he holds Yuuri close, hungrily. As hungry as Yuuri is to be touched, to be felt, to be kissed, to be held, to be consumed. 

It’s intense. 

It’s too much. 

“Viktor,” Yuuri says, pulling away. “Viktor-- I need to--“

And Viktor stops and looks at him with his hair mussed, with his eyes wide, with that same expression from the grocery store written across his face. Lost, almost. 

Yuuri swallows. “I-- I need to go a little slower,” he says. 

Yuuri feels a little lost, too. 

Viktor nods. His hands move from his hips to grasping his hands tightly. Like a lifeline. 

They catch their breath for a moment, before Viktor runs his hands through his silvery hair and clears his throat. Looks away from Yuuri, busies himself with a pair of waterglasses on the table nearby. 

“Of course,” he says, nodding. “I’m sorry I got carried away-- most people don’t come. Don't stick around.”

Yuuri looks at him, stricken. “That can’t be true,” he says. “You’re...you’re _you_.”

Viktor laughs. It’s funny, the way the sound catches and sticks inside his throat. It’s funny the way it’s not particularly funny at all. Viktor throws his hands in the air, gesturing to himself. 

“I’m me,” he says, wearily. 

Yuuri feels his eyebrows twitch and crease with concern. “I wouldn’t want you to be anyone else.”

Viktor looks at him. There’s something right at the surface there. Something Yuuri thinks Viktor might spend most of his time burying. “You don’t want me to be your father figure? Your brother? Your lover?”

Yuuri shakes his head. “I just want you to be Viktor,” he says. 

Viktor moves a little. Reaches forward and stops himself before he says, “Can...can I?”

Yuuri nods, and Viktor wraps him into his arms. 

Yuuri doesn’t say anything. Viktor doesn’t either. 

They stand there for a long moment, only startled out of the embrace by Makkachin barking loudly.

They pull apart. Yuuri laughs a little, quietly. No real humor. Just something to fill the sudden space left in the rapidly cooling redness between them. 

“I’ll boil some water,” Yuuri says. “For the pasta.”

Viktor nods. 

Dinner will be ready in a little more than half an hour. 

“Can,” Viktor starts, and he pauses. “Would you give me your phone number?” He asks. “You can ask Chris, I don’t call often and I almost never text. I just...want to be able to.”

Yuuri nods. Viktor pulls out an ancient flip phone, one Yuuri thinks can’t even display in color, and inputs his number. 

Viktor looks at it and smiles, genuinely and fondly. 

Makkachin barks again, and Viktor says something to her in what must be Russian. 

Yuuri turns away to pour water into a pot. He sets it on the eye and turns the old electric stove on. Salts the water and ups the oven temperature a bit-- it won’t have to wait for them to be ready for it. He takes a sip of water, and when he turns around, Viktor is laying on the floor, still and pale, his lips blue.    
  



	8. Chapter 8

Yuuri sits in the straight-backed chair beside Viktor’s bed and looks at the covered tray of hospital food and wonders absently how difficult it would be to smuggle in something  _ good _ for Viktor. 

Yuuri hadn’t realized how  _ thin _ Viktor was until he saw the paramedics loading him onto the gurney and wheeling him into the ambulance. He didn’t realize how close his bones sit to his skin and how strangely  _ wiry _ he is. Viktor, awake, is animated with a presence that makes him seem so much more. Yuuri hadn’t realized how thin Viktor is even while he held him. 

Viktor’s still asleep. The nurse said that’s normal-- apparently the medication for his heart condition will put him under for a few hours. His heart condition. 

Yuuri looks at Viktor in the bed, small under the blankets and hooked up to machines and he feels like disappearing, like slipping away to never be seen again. 

Yuuri can’t shake the feeling that this is somehow his fault.

“How is he?” Chris asks, as he steps into the room, disheveled. “I came as soon as they called.”

Yuuri looks at him. 

“I’m his emergency contact,” Chris explains. “What happened?”

“He-- we were cooking and I turned around and he was...the nurse called it an ‘incident.’” Yuuri says. “I called 911; I didn’t know what else to; he was blue and his heartbeat was-- it stopped and started.”

Chris comes up to the bed and looks at Viktor. There’s something very fond and concerned in his expression. “I take it he didn’t have the chance to tell you,” he says.

Yuuri shakes his head. 

“It’s been a while, since this happened,” Chris says. “More than a year. It’s random. He’ll be okay. He just has to--” Chris takes a deep breath. Sighs, heavily. “He has to take better care of himself.”

Yuuri looks at Viktor, whose breath is a little unsteady, rasps a little in his throat. 

“He’s so  _ thin _ ,” Yuuri whispers, half in envy and half in horror.

Chris nods. “Has he been sleeping?” He asks. “Do you know?”   
Yuuri shrugs. 

“I need to--he needs to eat something,” he says. “Chankonabe or something. He’s so  _ thin _ .”

Viktor coughs, suddenly, on the bed, and then he blinks a couple of times and he looks, blue eyes bleary, at Yuuri. 

“Yuuri,” he says, his voice soft and rasping. “What happened?”   
“I called 911,” Yuuri answers. 

“What?” Viktor asks, sounding genuinely confused. 

“You’re in hospital, Viktor,” Chris says, and Viktor’s eyes tear from Yuuri up to Chris, still confused. “Your heart condition.”

Viktor’s brow stays furrowed, and then something dawns over him. He murmurs something, before hissing as he reaches up to settle his hand over his heart.

“It’s not a  _ heart condition _ ,” Viktor murmurs. “I’m sorry-- I’m so sorry--”   
“It’s a  _ fucking  _ heart condition, Viktor, and just because you don’t take care of yourself doesn’t mean it will just disappear!” Chris shouts.

“I  _ know _ what it is, Chris,” Viktor says, back, his voice picking up volume. “It’s--”   
“Stop shouting!” Yuuri interrupts. Viktor goes silent, looks at him. Yuuri takes his hand. His fingers are cold, wrapped into Yuuri’s sweating palms. “Stop-- you were  _ blue _ , on the floor, I was so--you’re so  _ thin _ ,” Yuuri says, feeling something scared and inelegant claw up his throat. 

Viktor looks at Yuuri with an expression Yuuri can’t read. It’s open and overwhelmed and unbearably--

Yuuri can shoulder how almost  _ fond _ this expression is. 

But that’s when the nurse steps in and Yuuri lets go of Viktor’s hand and runs out of the hospital, runs down the long blocks, runs and runs until he winds up forty blocks away and at the backdoor of his restaurant, panting and terrified. 

He leans against the brick of the alleyway, the door just up a  set of concrete steps. He catches his breath, or he tries to. He throws up, bent over his own knees, and when he rocks up he’s still not breathing right, still overwhelmed, his thoughts slippery and fleeting and terrifying. 

Yuuri pants, until the door opens. 

Yurio, holding a steaming cup of coffee in one hand and a pack of Sobraines in the other. 

“Chef?” Yurio asks. 

That’s how Yuuri knows he looks really bad. Not a  _ Chef Katsuki _ or a  _ Katsuki _ or a  _ Yuuri _ . Just  _ Chef _ . 

“It’s me,” he says. 

There’s a clatter as Yurio’s feet travel down the stairs and the sound of his mug being gently placed on the concrete step just at Yuuri’s eye level. 

Yurio’s hands take both of Yuuri’s shoulders. Yurio bobs and weaves into Yuuri’s vision. “You okay?” Yurio asks. “You look like shit. Does Phichit know you’re here--”

“No,” Yuuri says, shaking his head. “I just ran. I’m--” He swallows. “You shouldn’t smoke,” he says. 

“You’re worse than Beka,” Yurio bristles. “Hey come sit in the kitchen okay, it’s just like, me and Beka and Seung-gil.”

Yuuri lets himself be guided up the steps and into the kitchen, where he’s sat on a stool on of the way. A glass of water winds up in front of him, and then a glass of orange juice.

Yuuri looks at the juice for a long moment. 

“For the blood orange caramel,” Yurio says, after a moment. “That’s where it’s from. Drink.”

Yuuri nods, slowly, but it’s not until he hand wraps around the glass and he actually takes a sip that Yurio breaks eye contact with him and turns around to grab a potato peeler and a tupperware full of washed russets.

Yuuri swallows. “Don’t smoke,” he repeats. 

“What the fuck has you looking all pale for?” Yurio asks. 

Yuuri studies the polished surface of the steel counter. 

“Hey,” Yurio says. Yuuri looks at him. “You wanna freak out that’s fine but if you’re gonna go all fucking spooky on me, I’m gonna call Phichit and that’s a promise.”

Yuuri flinches, reflexively. “Don’t swear,” he says. “He almost died.”

“Whoah, who,” Yurio says. “What? Who?”

“Viktor,” Yuuri says. “I came from the hospital.”

Yurio looks at him for a moment and says, “Jesus Christ, are you okay?”

Yuuri looks at the color of the juice. 

“I...yes?” Yuuri answers. “Yes.”

“Fuck,” Yurio says. “Okay. You should probably go home and sleep or something.”

Yuuri nods. “Yeah,” he says. “Probably.”

He’s not sure how long he sits at the bench. But eventually Phichit comes up to him, his voice soft and his hands gentle, and then Yuuri is loaded into a cab and then he’s at home, sitting on his couch, and the feeling, the feeling that has scared him so badly, so intensely, remains. 

Viktor’s fond eyes. His blue lips.

Yuuri sits on his couch and the day passes around him, and he’s still not sure why he ran. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chris: it's not supernatural it's a heart condition  
> viktor: it's not a heart condition it's supernatural  
> me, the writer: it's supernatural but you should probably also do something about the heart condition


	9. Chapter 9

Yuuri runs out of the room. The nurse comes in and Yuuri-- something disconnected and panicky falls over his face, and he stumbles out and then runs and Viktor, helpless, watches him go.

It feels like coming up from underwater, the feeling of waking up the first time after she does it. He feels dizzy and heavy and tired. Slow and stupid and cold, so cold. His fingertips are still numb and his head feels fogged up. He fights the feeling to fall back asleep. He wishes he could tear himself from the bed and run after Yuuri, wishes he could explain, wishes anyone would  _ believe _ him. 

But instead he’s in the room with Chris, who looks exhausted and sick with worry, and a nurse, and the phantom feeling of his mother’s icy fingers wrapping around him. 

“Yakov,” Viktor says, the energy falling out of him. “You didn’t--”

Chis shakes his head. “As soon as I  _ heard _ , Viktor,” Chris says. “Why wouldn’t I-- what if you  _ died _ ? What if you had died?”

“Chris,” Viktor sighs. 

The nurse clears her throat, loudly. Viktor turns, looks at her. 

“We’re working on scheduling you for an x-ray,” she says, “but with your medical history, it doesn’t look like it’ll tell us anything we don’t know.”

“And I should be scheduled for a consult for a pacemaker,” Viktor says. “Or a splint. I know.”

The nurse raises an eyebrow. “Mr. Nikiforov--”   
“I know these are serious health problems,” he says. “I also know they are expensive. I have the right to refuse your treatment and care. I would like to be released.”

The nurse sighs heavily. “Let me consult with your team, Mr. Nikiforov,” she says. Leaves the room. 

“Viktor, what the fuck,” Chris says, running his hands through his hair. His roots have come in earnestly, dark chestnut under the yellowed bleach-blonde. He has his glasses on and a baggy shirt over ratty jeans. He must have tugged it all on as soon as he got the call. 

“Chris,” Viktor says.    
“No!” Chris interrupts. “Viktor, god damn it, you make it--” Chris stops. Closes his eyes. Lets go a long, long sigh. “You make it so  _ fucking _ hard to you be your friend.” His green eyes look tired behind the lenses of his round glasses. “Yuuri was-- I don’t know if I wish you could have heard him or if I’m glad you never will. He was  _ terrified _ . He was so scared; he had no idea what was going on. And Yakov-- you’re never the one who calls Yakov about this. It’s always me. You act like taking care of your health and taking this  _ seriously _ is some big inconvenience to you but it scares the  _ shit _ out of me! Every time!”

“Chris, I can’t do this right now,” Viktor sighs. “You never listen to me. You and Yakov, you never--”

Chris runs his face over his hand. Viktor hears the rasp of his hand over his stubble, unshaved. “You won’t get treatment, you won’t talk about it, you won’t eat, you won’t sleep,” he says. “I thought-- I hoped that maybe Yuuri would fucking make you  _ see _ that you don’t take care of yourself, that you don’t-- that you can’t live this way. You  _ can’t _ live this way. I’m scared you’re going to die this way.”

“Yakov and I are tired of watching you die,” he says. “The people you love are tired of watching you  _ die _ , Viktor.”

“You never listen to me,” Viktor says. “No one ever listens to me. You’re all just like her.”

“Do you hear yourself?” he asks. “You sound-- you sound like a paranoid--”

“You’ve never listened!” Viktor exclaims. “You and Yakov and the doctors-- I see her! I’ve always seen her!” Viktor’s hand shakes as it settles over his chest, fingers clutching, curling, clawing inward. “And none of you ever listen to me. None of you ever let me make my own choices. You all just want to--I came here to live my own life. To make my own choices.”

Chris’s forearms are rested on his knees. He looks down, at the floor. “Viktor,” he says. “You’re not an island. People love you, and that means you have to listen when we tell you that your choices affect us and scare us. But you don’t want to listen and I-- I can’t live this way.”

He stands and stuffs his hands into his jacket pockets. He closes his eyes. There’s an expression over his face that Viktor has seen before, one written in the features of saints on icons. Something beautiful but strained. 

“Goodbye, Viktor,” he says. And he steps out of the room, and Viktor finds himself alone. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's a short one, kids.   
> i'm on the twitter now! come bother me @moosefeels


	10. Chapter 10

Viktor comes back to the apartment, and it’s empty and stale and grey. 

It’s always like this, coming back from the hospital. His life, interrupted, dropped around him. The air is still and stale. The light is grey, flat. Viktor closes the door behind himself, puts his keys in the bowl beside door. 

Viktor took a cab back from the hospital. He doesn’t have the money for it-- he knows the bill for his stay there isn’t going to be cheap-- but the thought of have to take the train home is more than he can bear. 

He’s very tired. He always very tired after it happens. He checked himself out from the hospital quickly after refusing care. 

He feels like he hasn’t slept in weeks. 

Viktor sits down in a kitchen chair and feels his shoulders sag forward, the weight curving his spine down to the floor. 

“Why, Mama?” He asks. His voice feels very small. 

He feels the flex of her fingers inside of him. The chill of her eyes on his skin. 

Viktor takes as deep a breath as he can manage. 

He remembers the chicken in the oven, that Yuuri prepared for him-- with him-- before this happened. 

He feels a deep, terrible heaviness in him grow with the knowledge that he will have to throw it out. 

* * *

As surely as the seasons pass and the things buried in the earth rest and grow and the tides slip from the harbor and salmon swim upstream to spawn, Yuuri falls apart. 

Phichit feels bad for thinking it. He jogs down the sidewalk with a tote bag under his arm. He has a jar of miso tucked in there with some baby bok choy. He knows Yuuri has kombu and bonito in his pantry-- he would expect him to have miso, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. Phichit has nursed Yuuri through this enough times now to know his friend hasn’t eaten in a couple days. He also knows that the only things he’ll eat are macrobiotic. 

Phichit heads up the steps to Yuuri’s building and rings the bell. The door buzzes open. 

That’s good, at least. He’s up. 

Phichit heads up the stairs and opens Yuuri’s door. He has a key. Yuuri gave him one. 

The apartment is dark and dank. The air is heavy and cool. Stale. Yuuri has the heat down low-- he’s probably in bed still. 

Phichit puts the grocerties down on the counter. The kitchen is spotless. He opens the cabinets, the fridge. The plates are clean and dry and put away. The fridge is empty of groceries, just condiments and a few spare tupperware full of god knows what. There’s nothing in the rice cooker. Nothing in the oven or on the stove. 

Phichit nods. He takes a deep breath. 

He pulls a pot out of the cupboard and starts a pot of dashi to make miso soup. He’s done this enough that it’s practically muscle memory. Making Yuuri soup so he would eat something, anything. Picking Yuuri up from his mattress, making him shower, making him eat. 

Phichit loves Yuuri, but Yuuri falls apart, and Phichit is there to pick him back up and put him back together. 

Phichit stirs miso into the strained dashi. The liquid goes milky. The smell shifts, richer and salty. He puts a dry pan on a back burner and chars the bok choy, letting it pick up dark black color , the leaves wilting. He floats it into the soup.

The bowl is more than he’ll know Yuuri will eat. That’s part of it, too. Phichit knows Yuuri will eat about half of anything he’ll give him, so Phichit gives him a serving double what he thinks Yuuri  _ should _ eat.

Phichit grabs a spoon and steps across the apartment to Yuuri’s closed bedroom door.

He knocks twice and steps in. 

It’s been awful, the past weeks. Watching Yuuri come into the kitchen and go through the motions.

It’s always hard watching Yuuri fall apart like this. College and then Detroit and now this.

Yuuri is laying in bed, his back to the door. His blanket is pulled over his body, his shoulders and hips lumps under the navy blanket. His dark hair is oily and flat.

“Hey,” Phichit says. He sits down on the bed. Yuuri’s body rolls passively toward the new weight on the mattress. 

“I’ll be back in the kitchen,” Yuuri murmurs. “I just need a day.”

Phichit looks down at the soup. 

“What happened?” he asks.

Yuuri hasn’t said, and no one has been talking about it. Everyone has been walking on eggshells, about the loud absence of Viktor the photographer, about the heavy sag of Yuuri’s spine, about how Yuuri’s fastidious, obsessive way in the kitchen has all but crumbled and disappeared. 

Yuuri curls a little tighter into himself, away from Phichit. 

“He almost died,” Yuuri whispers, after a moment. 

The room is silent, absent the sound of rushing air, of the city outside. Phichit sits there, frozen, waiting for Yuuri to unfurl, to tell him. 

“We had a date,” Yuuri says, his voice so soft Phichit can barely hear him. “We kissed. And then he went to the hospital. I ran. He’s so thin. I ran. He hasn’t...he hasn’t said anything to me since.”

“He went to the hospital?” Phichit asks. 

Yuuri sits with the question for a long time. “He has a heart condition,” he answers. “Chris said he hasn’t been managing it like he’s supposed to. He didn’t even tell me he was sick. And I panicked and I ran and he hasn’t spoken to me since.”

An ambulance drives by outside. The siren sound leaks into the apartment. 

“When was the last time you ate?” Phichit asks.

Yuuri doesn’t answer. 

Phichit slides the bowl of soup onto Yuuri’s nightstand.

“I liked him  _ so _ much and he liked me,” Yuuri whispers. “And I fucked it up.”

Phichit takes a deep breath. He lets his eyes settle closed for a moment. 

“Yuuri--”   
“I’ll be okay,” Yuuri interrupts. “I’ll be okay. I’ll be back tomorrow. I’m just  _ tired _ . I’m so tired, Phichit.”   
Phichit looks down, at the bed. As his best friend, pulled away from him and into himself. 

“We don’t just want you there in the kitchen physically,” he answers. “It’s not just that we need hands or whatever. You’re our chef, Yuuri. You’re the spirit of the place. We need  _ you _ .”

“I know,” Yuuri whispers. “I know. I’ll be back tomorrow. But today I’m tired still. I’ll be back tomorrow, Phichit. I promise. I’ll be back.”

Phichit sits in the still room, with his friend’s promise draped heavy over his shoulders, and hopes with every part of himself that it’s true. 

**Author's Note:**

> i've been like....trying to compose this for fucking ever. updates will be slow and probably inconsistent.


End file.
